Keep It To Yourself
by Lord Axxingtons
Summary: It only takes a moment for things to change, to fall into place the way they should have been. And yet, to everyone else in Lavinia and Mary's lives, this high note becomes an ugly stain on two young ladies' reputations.


**Inspired by there is thunder in our hearts by dollsome.**

**there's no slurs in this fic, but there are attitudes that might be upsetting. i drew some of the emotion from my own experiences of my family's reaction to who i was dating, and it was a bit uncomfortable to think about.**

**i love dollsome's fic so much. i love it and i'm not sure if this is meant to be a direct continuation from it, or just an inspired work. i don't know. i wrote most of this on my lunch break at work. i think an old man may have been reading it over my shoulder**

**i was never quite sure whether lavinia lived with matthew and mrs crawley in their house after the war? but this is basically set under that assumption. its a minor detail anyway**

* * *

"I'm really not sure I ought to have behaved like that," Lavinia says rather gravely, after kissing her once again, and Mary has to smile.  
"Well, nor ought I, but don't let's worry about it too much. Stranger things go on in the Amazon."

They walk back to the house together slowly, and the urge to hold Lavinia's hand comes rather unexpectedly to Mary's mind, who usually thought all girlish displays of affection thoroughly silly: however, as Matthew comes into view in the doorway and gives a cheery wave, she casts aside any idea of acting on it.

Matthew turns away from the door, a little shaken, and finds himself on the receiving end of Edith's stare, scrutinising him like a fishing bird and trying not to seem too eager for gossip. "Goodness, Matthew, you look grey as ash," she remarks. "What on earth's the matter?"

"Nothing," Matthew says slowly, "only I thought I saw - well, nothing."

"Clearly it wasn't nothing," Edith presses, anxious to be his confidante before anybody comes looking for them.

"It - it just looked rather as though Mary and Lavinia were - kissing, I suppose. Like a man and woman, although - although that's absurd." he finds himself confessing.

"Really?" Edith's eyebrows shoot up and she can hardly suppress a delighted grin at this new obscure prize to hang over her sister.

Matthew immediately regrets saying anything at all. "But you must ignore me, I likely misinterpreted something friendly."

At this point, Cora's head pokes out of the living room door. "Are all you young people having a separate gathering out there?"

"Mamma," says Edith so immediately that Matthew was a fool not to see it coming, "You shan't believe what Matthew's just seen."

"Edith, I rather wish you wouldn't-" he protests weakly.

Cora looks at both of them. "Well now I must know."

"Mary and Lavinia were kissing like lovers! Isn't that rather strange?"

Cora goes pale and says nothing, and Matthew becomes aware of the silence on the other side of the door. Within a moment, Lord Grantham makes an appearance, tall and stony-faced.

"That is a strange accusation to make, yes," he says, and when did it become an accusation? "Matthew, you are my dearest boy and I am more than pleased to have you and Lavinia marry here, but I thought you were better than casting unsightly stories about my daughter's character. Really I thought you two had made amends, and were above such pettiness."

Matthew doesn't want to add to the air of the schoolyard rumour by passing the baton, but really, Edith knew exactly what she had done in saying it so loudly. "Look, I only meant that I saw Mary and Lavinia in a rather close embrace, which I'm sure was entirely sisterly, and I didn't mean to make it into a big thing - Edith, I wish you hadn't-"

"Well if you're all quite done," comes an icy voice from the door. "I think I shall do you all a favour and retire to bed, as I'm clearly better suited as a conversational topic than a partner."

Mary looks like a wintry queen and the gaze she shoots Matthew might have burned a hole in him. She stalks up the stairs and disappears. Behind her, Lavinia hovers, looking terribly red and flustered.

"Dear Mary," Cora says at once, peaceably, "I fear we've upset her."

By now, Sir Richard, Mrs. Crawley and the Dowager Countess have all emerged from the drawing room as well, and Alfred and Thomas look rather keen to join in on finding out whatever scene has been caused.

"What were you all talking about?" says Lavinia, looking rather too fearful for an innocent party, and gravitating to Matthew's side.

"Some nonsense; I shouldn't mind it. We had ought to head off soon, anyway," says Matthew hastily. He is aware that his mother is there, possibly that she heard him - somehow it feels embarrassing. "I shall say goodnight."

Cheeks are kissed and shoulders awkwardly embraced as is the usual fare, but as Branson brings the car around Matthew can't help but feel the curious stares don't leave them.

* * *

"I can't help but wonder what exactly was going on," Matthew tells Lavinia later, and she wants to be anywhere but here. "I mean, I honestly do regret telling Edith and making it into a public affair, but - you are my betrothed, and I know what I saw."

"You wouldn't understand, Matthew," she says, too defensively, too dismissively; it's as if some of Mary's essence has seeped into her pores. "Just something between girls. It's forgotten."

But it's not forgotten, and she cannot forget it. How will her life proceed now? How can she marry Matthew; know Mary only as a relative by law, a newspaper editor's wife? She and Mary are so much more than that now. She has no idea what Mary feels, and her own thoughts sound like madness, but she cannot forget it.

"Lavinia, I don't mean to start a fight, but I wish you'd be honest with me. It felt like watching you be unfaithful, really it did, as if Mary were some rival of mine. And I just think it's a wholly odd thing to have done, kissing her like that."

"Must I explain everything to you that you clearly don't understand?" She rubs her temples and takes a seat on the bed, fatigued, wanting him to just go away. "We were talking, and it just began. It's over now. I wish you'd leave me alone, I'm terribly tired, and I've been embarrassed enough for one day."

It's the worst fight they've ever had, and he looks at her like he didn't know such wounding words could come from so delicate a creature. There is a lot that he will never understand about me, Lavinia realises. I am not as one-dimensional as he imagines.

"Well, all right." says Matthew at last, slowly, and hurt. "It's just a betrayal I didn't expect from you, Lavinia. I had hoped you would be friends, but I never imagined I'd be ganged up on in such a way."

Lavinia stands up from the bed and clasps a hand to her forehead. "My god, a 'betrayal'? Must everything always be about you?"

She stops, aware that she is shouting, and that there is a silence from downstairs. She prays Mrs. Crawley hasn't heard enough to discern words, although it is too late to pretend they aren't arguing. Nothing about this needs to be more public. She feels profoundly angry that things have turned out this way; what was something personal, not any kind of political statement, just a shared moment, has now become an ugly scandal painting the air around her red. She hates it. She longs for Mary in this moment.

Matthew leaves without a word, and for the first time in a long time, she doesn't miss him. All she thinks of is Mary, and that moment. Mary, Mary, Mary. She hugs her pillow, and wonders why she feels like a girl in love once more.

* * *

Sybil's return the following day is the prelude to an evening Mary dreads. Her sisters trap her in her room like a pair of mafiosos, and Mary supposes it was inevitable. "Well, go on then, out with it." She can't be bothered to seem ignorant.

"So is it true? The love that dare not speak its name?" Edith asks immediately, and Sybil gives an admonishing gasp.  
"Edith, you are horrid!"

"Well, for god's sake, there's no point dancing around it. Edith is just delighted that once again, the scandal of the house centres around me. I have no particular inclination to answer your questions, though." Mary rubs her temples.

Sybil places a hand on Mary's shoulder. "Whatever Matthew saw, he was wrong," she says firmly. "What a lot of nonsense."

"Well, he wasn't wrong." Mary shrugs. "I did kiss Lavinia, in a more than sisterly fashion. I see no point in pretending I didn't, because the fact is out there."

Sybil looks unsure how to respond, and pulls her hand away. Mary thinks, once again, that she is alienated.

Edith folds her arms and stands in front of her, confrontationally. "And what does Sir Richard think of all this?"

"I neither know nor care for his thoughts on anything. Might I be permitted to sleep?"

"But Mary, you can't be so apathetic about this. It changes everything - your chances for marriage; your reputation - if the footmen speak to the wrong people, it'll be in the newspapers. Aren't you worried? And how awkward things shall be in the house now - will Matthew and Lavinia still visit tomorrow afternoon?"

I don't care, she thinks, I do not care about any of this. "I jolly well hope so, because I wish to see Lavinia tomorrow, and I wish to see her alone. I bid you good night."

They exit warily, giving her looks over their shoulders as if unsure their sister is still even there.

* * *

"I remember the first day I met you," Lavinia tells her. "You were so terrifyingly beautiful it was all I could think of all evening."

Mary smiles against her cheek. "Yes, I remember. And you were so sweet and green and eager to come off as nice as you naturally are anyway. You did look rather like a frightened prey animal all evening, my dear."

"I was worried," Lavinia says, closing her eyes as Mary's lips trace the line of her neck. "That you would snap me up if I wasn't careful."

"Well," comes the whisper and the answering bite, close and just for her, "better late than never."

* * *

"I don't know what you mean, my lady." But Thomas's expression, that of the lad caught with his hand in the cookie jar, tells otherwise.

"Come now." She doesn't have time for coyness. "You can't imagine there's anybody who doesn't know, except maybe some of the maids. We all like you just as well for it. Or at least we would, if you were less unpleasant at times."

"I don't make it my business to be unpleasant," Thomas says, examining a picture frame intently and not meeting her eyes. "But life hasn't given me many opportunities for happiness. If I may be frank, my lady - and I hope I may, seeing as we are discussing my personal life - I have to wonder what you've even come to ask me. There's no particular art to sodomy that I can teach you."

Mary flinches. That indelicate word and all its associations seem so far apart from what she shares with Lavinia, which is gentle and highly feminine. Perhaps the word is better suited to men, with all that testosterone fuelled energy, lumping and bumping around. Pamuk, for all his sleekness, had in the end more collapsed into her like a wrestler than anything else. It was not something she could see anyone coming to enjoy, but then of course Thomas had clearly never warmed to a woman's touch, so perhaps it struck people differently.

"Nothing like that. I just wondered what it is that you say to defend yourself when people bring it up. I find myself frustratingly lost for words, and Matthew has such a proclivity for shouting and making a fuss. I saw Lavinia today and everyone's all at arms about it. And I never know what to say."

Thomas looks at her with baleful and pitying eyes, and sets down the picture frame. "There's nothing to be done, my lady," he says at last. "There's no easy way out of it, except to just say they're wrong about you."

But, she wants to say, and she can see him understanding the sentiment too, but they are not wrong. I want them to know who I am fully, and to accept it in their own way.

"Not in our world," she says to herself. Thomas nods and suggests, if he may, a stiff drink.


End file.
